Did the military change your faith?

“Cheeks” Aguillon, a U.S. Army Veteran and former chaplain assistant who now serves on the Vegas Veteran Voices board, spent his second deployment to Afghanistan traveling from outpost to outpost with his chaplain. They held services. They talked to anyone who needed it. And at every stop, he says, the soldiers had the same question waiting for him.

“Hey, are you that chaplain assistant that shot that guy?”

Hear it at 1:11:40

He was. There had been an attack inside his base, and he had fired his weapon. He tells that story elsewhere in the interview. What he says here is that the question opened doors a sermon would not have.

We start with him because that is where this subject lives. Not in a chapel. Out where the chaplain goes, among people who have just seen something and are deciding what they believe about it. In interviews filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Las Vegas nonprofit, eleven Veterans and a Gold Star mother talked about God, church, prayer or the lack of them. Some found faith in the worst hour of their lives. Some kept it and fight with it. One is trying and says it feels forced. Some left, or drifted, or never went much. We are not going to tell you which of them is right. In these interviews they did not tell each other, either.

The man next to the chaplain

The Army has had chaplain assistants since 1909, and its own history of the job lists “safeguarding chaplains during deployments” among the duties. The title is now religious affairs specialist. Aguillon uses the old one, because it was his.

“There’s a few of us out there that have fired our weapons. There’s not a lot.”

Hear it at 1:12:58

The harder part of the job, as he describes it, had nothing to do with a weapon. The first memorial ceremony he ever worked was for one of his own soldiers.

“The unique challenges to being a chaplain assistant are that you have to, as a young guy, have a lot of emotional maturity coming into the job.”

Hear it at 29:51

He spent years being the one other soldiers brought their troubles to, and has said that when he got out he found he had not been tending his own. He does not preach in the interview. The nearest he comes is describing the chaplain he served with, who is still one of his closest friends.

“Very hard to describe the working relationship that we had as chaplain and assistant other than like a God thing.”

Hear it at 1:12:00

Found in the worst hour

Billy Wiland, a Marine Corps Veteran, attorney and gym owner, grew up Jewish and says he always believed in God. Belief was not the problem.

“I was so angry at God. I thought God was aloof and I thought Jesus was weak.”

Hear it at 12:23

He was at his parents’ dinner table, reading the Psalms, when he overdosed. He says he should not have lived, and he describes what he met in those minutes as a light more real than anything he had seen.

“I was 47 years old and that was the first time I understood the fear of God.”

Hear it at 14:35

He calls himself a Messianic Jew now, a Jew who follows Jesus. He is hard on the man he was before.

“I lived as a hypocrite for 40 years.”

Hear it at 21:04

And he measures the change in one small prayer. It used to be “dear God, another day.”

“But now it’s like, thank you, God, for another day.”

Hear it at 37:11

Raivadus Gill, an Iraq combat Veteran and founder of Operation Battle Cry, was alone and seconds from ending his life when he heard three words. He is careful about how he reports it.

“I used to say somebody said, ‘Open your eyes.’”

Hear it at 4:46

After years of telling the story, and talking it over with pastors, he says it plainly: God said it. He opened his eyes, saw a flyer on the table for an event he had promised to attend, and left the house.

In our interview with JMach and Tommy Nutzmann, the question came up of where a person should start. JMach is a Marine Corps Veteran, combat engineer and host of the JMach Podcast. Nutzmann is a retired U.S. Navy Chief and creator of After the Uniform. This answer was said in that interview, and it describes a day in a backyard.

“I fell to my hands and knees and I just started sobbing and I said I quit. Like I no longer want to try to understand.”

Hear it at 58:06

Then he prayed. He says people will tell you to pick up a Bible, and that it does not work for everybody.

Kept, and argued with

The faith in that interview is not a quiet one. Earlier in it, Nutzmann talked about his son, who was born premature in 2008.

“He was alive for 18 days.”

Hear it at 45:11

He was stationed in Florida, far from his family, and says nobody around him had been through it. He is a father of four now. This is what he says he learned, in his words and no one else’s.

“The hardest part I had with my son, and it took me years to let go, was realizing that continuing to hurt as hard as I did never will ever bring him back.”

Hear it at 49:54

He does not tie that loss to his faith in so many words, and we will not do it for him. This, about faith, was said in the same interview.

“I was able to find my way back to Jesus through some really rough times and dark times I never thought I’d go through.”

Hear it at 51:47

Also said in that interview: reading the book of Job, not being a huge fan of church, and getting more from talking to God directly. The talking goes both ways.

“On days I’m pissed off, I don’t hold back. If I’m pissed off at God, I’m going to cuss at him.”

Hear it at 54:20

The speaker compares it to being furious at your father and still having a father.

Alfred Brenner, a Purple Heart recipient and retired Marine Corps K9 handler, was praying on the ground in Afghanistan while a medic worked on him. He was raised Catholic and calls his relationship with God an important part of his life now.

“Faith is a lot about what I do today.”

Hear it at 35:49

Jason Lee Morrison, a Marine Corps Veteran, Recon Marine, writer and poet, put his on the front of his book. The battered cover is a photograph.

“It’s actually a picture of the cover of my old Bible that I used to haul around with me and just beat the hell out of when I was, you know, on deployments and stuff. I always brought it with me.”

Hear it at 27:00

And Chelsey Gray, a Marine Corps Veteran and parachute rigger, kept the faith and lost a church. After the Corps, worn down in every way she could name, she and her husband joined a large congregation.

“That’s where we got involved in a church. And unfortunately when you go to mega churches like they turn into cults and that’s what happened.”

Hear it at 25:38

She came out of it more open about what she believes, not less, with one rule attached.

“I still love everybody even if you do not have the same faith as me.”

Hear it at 32:42

Believing, and not

The backyard answer was a reply to someone else in the room. Our interview with JMach and Tommy Nutzmann also holds the thing a lot of people in a pew are thinking. It was said in that interview like this.

“Religion and having a relationship with God is something I’ve been working on for a long time and I’m working even harder right now.”

Hear it at 53:31

Then the rest of it.

“It feels fake. Like I’m forcing it.”

“I believe but I don’t believe.”

Hear it at 53:41

Nobody in the room argued him out of it. The reply, from the same interview, was about what had worked for the man giving it.

“I quit listening to everybody else’s relationships with God.”

Hear it at 53:53

Left, drifted, or called home instead

Greg Cope White, a Marine Corps Veteran and author of The Pink Marine, had settled the question before he shipped.

“When I went in, I’d already left the church.”

Hear it at 22:20

He had been raised Mormon. At Parris Island he found that a recruit who claimed a faith with its own service got to walk across the base alone on Sunday, which never happens. So for one hour a week he was a Mormon again. He tells it as a story about boot camp, not about God.

Tarek “Joey Nobody” Kadourah, a U.S. Army Veteran and former intelligence contractor, grew up in a conservative Muslim home. He says being shot at overseas by snipers who shared that religion rearranged what he thought it meant.

“I don’t consider myself a Muslim really. I’m more like spiritual. I have a verse from the Bible tattooed on me.”

Hear it at 15:15

He went to Sunday services in the Army and says he has taken something from every religion he has studied.

Jo MT, a 20 year Air Force bomb loader who is now a stand-up comedian, had a standing appointment on Sundays, and it was not at the chapel. It was a phone call to his mother.

“She was my direct connect line to God.”

Hear it at 5:30

Gretchen Catherwood is a Gold Star mother, not a Veteran. Her son, a Marine, was killed in action in 2010. She says she does not know how much she holds with religion or heaven. She knows one thing.

“I do believe that my son and my dad are watching me.”

Hear it at 51:48

What we can say, and what we cannot

Twelve people, and no two of them in the same place. If there is a pattern, it is only that none of them described faith as a thing the military handed out or took away on a schedule. It moved when their lives did.

VA has a term for one way that can happen. Its National Center for PTSD says moral injury can follow taking part in, failing to prevent or witnessing something that goes against your own morals or values, and that it “can have an impact on a person’s faith and spirituality.” None of our guests used that term about themselves, and we are not using it about them. It is there if it is useful to you. So are VA’s chaplains, who by VA’s own description see Veterans of any religious affiliation.

Aguillon has a rule from his old job that we tried to follow in writing this.

“Part of being a good chaplain assistant, good chaplain team, is reading the room, knowing when you’re wanted and when you’re not wanted.”

Hear it at 1:13:16